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Folding without really folding

I wanted to play around with some ideas for nondestructive creasing of a map and since I like this map so much thought I would use it as my test subject. It didn't turn out to bad. I may need to do a bit more tweaking here and there, but over all it works.

NOTE: This is an effect. The actual map itself was not altered in anyway and is still the same as it was before I added the creasing which was part of what I was trying to achieve here.

Attached Thumbnails

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Looks good

Its really a convincing start but if you want to make it really look folded you're going to have to put creases in the paper as well as shade it. I recall a couple of Photoshop tutorials I'm sure you could adapt to the gimp.

If you are talking about deforming it, you'll note that I stated this was an effect and that the original is exactly as it was. I want to maintain that idea. I don't want to do any destructive changes to the map but give the illusion that it has been folded. What about it is failing to give that illusion?

That is what I'm looking to achieve so please let me know. Is it because the image is so large the "creases" don't work? Take a look at it in its non enlarged appearance and see if it works better. If so, I'll have to remember to keep image sizes down quite a bit to allow the illusion to work.

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If you are trying to do it as a nondestructive layer I think you've done a great job. The only small nit pick is that you might have a floating creaseline at the bottom of the folds and maybe play with some highlights as well as shadows. That would be really really finicky though and might not be worth the effort.

Yea I had considered that, but my thinking was that this wouldn't be a sharply creased map. It would be one folded quickly to keep from prying eyes and shoved into a bag or something. I tried doing sharper creases but they sort of force you distort the image to get the look right, and I'm trying not to do that. The idea here is that if I can get this to work I can create an action that would work on any map and potentially allow you to specify the number of folds you want. Just sort of toying with an idea or two.

To give you an idea, the above only took me about 15 minutes or so at lunch today, and a lot of that was fiddling around.

Bill Stickers is innocent! It isn't Bill's fault that he was hanging out in the wrong place.Please make an effort to tag all threads. This will greatly enhance the usability of the forums.

If you are trying to do it as a nondestructive layer I think you've done a great job. The only small nit pick is that you might have a floating creaseline at the bottom of the folds and maybe play with some highlights as well as shadows. That would be really really finicky though and might not be worth the effort.

That is a great tutorial. I'll have to incorporate some of those ideas. I was with him until the end when he started touching the actual map layer. I'm trying to do this without manipulating the actual map itself which is where the challenge is.

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That's a great trick! Of course I'm not even slightly biased by the choice of map

It took me a while to figure out the direction of the creases. I thought for a long time that the central crease was a valley crease - so that when the map was folded the image would be inside. However I now realise it's the other way round - which makes sense of some of the other shadows that were confusing me. While I was figuring it out I noticed that the drop shadows on the right hand side are out - they should be under the peaked folds. I'm also with the others - a light dodge along the creases would help a little. Here's a quick shot: